Marine surface vessels in distress during seawater travel sometimes become immobile at some seawater location so as to require an external source of motive power for movement therefrom. The provision of such external motive power source for ship towing purposes, heretofore involved the use of tugboats through which transport of towing apparatus to some seawater location was performed in order to reliably carry out a towing mission on an emergency basis. However, tugboat transport involved substantial transit time following an emergency call from a marine vessel in distress. Accordingly, it is an important object of the present invention to reliably and more quickly perform a towing mission for a ship in distress, involving use of a motive power source externally of the ship at some remote seawater location in response to a distress call from such remote location.